His Eyes
by Picklesticks
Summary: Kanae, I want you to meet Professor Takuma Nekasa." Kanae must carry on alone, with his dearest friend fighting for the enemy. SPOILERS FOR 4th DVD! Shounen ai subtext KojixRyo


**Story Title: **His Eyes

**Author:** Picklesticks

**Genre:** Generator Gawl

**Rating:** G, with shounen-ai subtexts (KojixRyo)

**Summary: **"Kanae, I want you to meet Professor Takuma Nekasa."Kanae must carry on alone, with his dearest friend fighting for the enemy.

**Warnings:** Angst, subtext, SPOILERS!!!

**Notes:** That moment must have felt like a punch in the stomach for poor Kanae. My take on what was going on behind that impassive face.

**Archive:** Yes, just tell me first please.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. They'd be doing more naughty things if they were. Please don't sue, I'm just a poor college kid.

* * *

"Kanae, I want you to meet Professor Takuma Nekasa."

For an instant, my heart stopped. I couldn't breathe. My world was crashing down around me. Long heartbeats I stared at the man standing beside Ryuko Saito. _Ryo!_ I knew him immediately, but at the same time I didn't know him at all. This broken-down wreck of a scientist wore the same skin, older but still the same, of he who had once been my closest companion and dearest friend. _But he was not the same man._

They say the eyes are windows of the soul. Ryo's eyes had always been large, round, earnest; his soul spilled out of them, generous, caring, his emotions and thoughts easy to read. He was an open book for anyone to read, and the only thing to read was good; he had a good heart. The mad blue orbs that graced me now with a dull stare were completely soulless – there was nothing spilling out of them because there was nothing to spill. No goodness, no caring, just a wild focus, broken only by a periodic shudder. He was a madman.

Two years of working with Ryuko Saito had honed my ability to mask my feelings to perfection. That ability was the only thing that saved me now, for my face was able to remain impassive while inside I wept – screamed -- with rage and grief. Through the last long, lonely years, years of every minute pretending I was no more than Ryuko's stooge, of agreeing with her and aiding her and even pretending that I was just slightly infatuated with her, I had cherished within me some hope that Ryo had been spared, that he had been flung to a time when Oju Academy and include cells were a distant, undreamt-of future. I had never dreamed… this.

Never dreamed that the blond angel who haunted my dreams would turn into this… this _thing_. This utter wreck of a human being that stared about, dull, unshaven, haggard, and barely sane.

Ryuko smiled at me, her usual superior, cold smile that made me sick inside, made me want to vomit, to scrub myself raw until the touch of her smile was gone. "Nekasa-san is involved in some _very_ interesting research, Kanae. _Very_ interesting research."

I wanted to cry. Not cry – howl. Shake and gibber with mindless rage at the universe that could do this to me, to us… to make us mindless puppets in the very game we were trying to prevent.

_ Oh Ryo…_

"Hm," I said noncommittally. After all, she had never told her assistant about include cells, generators, or any of her plans. They weren't supposed to be discovered yet. "What sort of research, my dear?"

The Bitch smirked. "Research, Kanae, that is going to change the world."

================= (o)=================

Nekasa – I could not, _dared_ not, think of him as Ryo – seldom left his lab. He was driven, obsessed, deranged by his researches. All the better for me. I could barely stand his presence – his haggard face, staring mad eyes, and deranged mumbling taunted me with reminders of what I'd lost, and what I'd become. _How far I've fallen!_ Curled in my bed at night, I tossed and turned in agony. Even there, unobserved, I couldn't let my defenses down, couldn't release the pain that coursed through my system. If I let myself break down once in safety, I might break down again, where the Bitch would hear. And that would be disastrous. My last chance would be gone. _Our_ last chance.

I ascertained quickly that Nekasa remembered nothing of the man he'd once been. How could he? If there were even the least vestige of Ryo remaining in him, he would not have been able to do his research, would not have been able to push single-mindedly toward the goal that had filled Ryo with such horror.

Against my will, the memory of Ryo's face the day he told Gawl and I what he had found sprang to mind. His eyes were dark, filled with horror, with self-loathing that he could have been a part – a principal player – in the great evil that was Kubere, and his voice trembled and broke as he laid it all out. The one word that springs to mind to describe Ryo, the word that I always remember in connection with him, is _heart_. He had the greatest heart of any human being I'd ever known, the greatest capability to _feel_, and to _care_. This twisted caricature could do none of those things, could not even look beyond his own obsession with the include cells. He was the Bitch's genius puppet, her tame biologist, doing all her own work for her. He was as much her toy as Natsumi, as much a servant of her will. But unlike poor, tentative, fragile Natsumi, he had gone under her thumb of his own free will. The clone girl had no choice. The Bitch was – a sickening thought – as much of a mother as Natsumi could claim, and she had nowhere to go. Nekasa, broken man that he was, was an adult, capable of functioning on his own. He had allowed himself to be taken in, enslaved to the will of the woman who was Kubere. And yet, how could he know? I had to remind myself that he remembered nothing, understood nothing of what we had been through. I didn't know how, I didn't know why, but my Ryo had been wiped away, gone, and a stranger, an obsessive scientist whose only thought was to find the include cells and understand them, had taken over his voice and his body. The eyes I had remembered with such longing had all the soul taken out of them and were filled instead with madness.

Years passed. Nekasa never failed to nauseate me with the memory of all I'd lost, but I held out hope. The memories of an amnesiac are never truly lost, merely forgotten for a time. I could not risk the attempt to jog his memory, for fear of alerting the Bitch to my true identity, and his, but I prayed that as the critical day grew closer, he might regain those memories on his own. But as the fatal day approached, the day when three disoriented but determined young men first entered the town of Oju, he still showed no signs of improvement. I despaired.

=================(o)=================

I arrived in time to hear the end of the paper dispute between myself – my younger self! – and the woman at the newspaper stand. I had to suppress a smile.

"Here's your paper back. One day, none of this will matter."

How arrogant I had sounded! How self-assured, how young. Gawl and Ryo's teasing sounded to my jaded ears equally young. The words were almost inaudible, but that didn't matter: they were graven in my heart and my mind.

"Nice job, Koji."

"Oooh, she likes you."

What I wouldn't give to go back to that day! Despite all the heartache, despite everything to follow, I felt a sudden, intense stab of yearning to be that green-haired younger self, with friends on either side of me, despite everything feeling an optimistic hope that everything would work out okay. We were the good guys, and even though I knew intellectually that the good guys lost more often than they won, it had still seemed impossible that _we_ could lose. After all, our plan was so simple. Jump in, establish ourselves as students, find Takuma Nekasa, and convince him not to pursue the include cells. Easy, ne?

And now, I knew that task to be hopeless. I purchased a paper, deciding that it would make a good cover if the three newcomers happened to notice me. I had aged in eight years, enough that I was not immediately recognizable as Suzuki Koji, but still… better to be safe than sorry. The Bitch knew they were there, might be following them as well; I was supposed to be back in the lab, encouraging Nekasa and watching the cameras. Instead, I watched the three young hopes for humanity's future, and thought.

I had thought much, in the past eight years. I had rehearsed and rehashed everything that had happened since the first day that I met stunning young Kudou Ryo, a classmate in Kubere's advanced sciences program. All our time working the Generator Project. Ryo's terrible discovery, and the conference that ended in our decision to go back into the past. The day Ryo and I stared at each other, and acknowledged openly that it might not be possible to convince Takuma Nekasa to abandon his research.

I had said that day that I would have no compunctions, no hesitation, if called upon to murder him. Now, the thought sickened me. Despite his insanity, his inhumanity, he was still _Ryo_, somewhere inside. The thought of killing him made me want to vomit. That I had expressed the willingness to do so horrified me. I had not known, could not have known, but that made no difference to my heart and my gut. _I had announced my intention and ability to murder Ryo!_

Large blue eyes stared at me reproachfully from the recesses of my own brain. _How could you, Koji?_ My mind taunted me with Ryo's voice, Ryo's impassioned inflections and tonalities, filling his mouth with words he never said. _How could you have ever harbored the thought of killing me? I thought you loved me._

_ I did_, I answered the voice. Is this a sign of insanity, arguing with one's own imagination? _I do. I didn't know! _

But blue eyes framed by blond hair only gazed at me in mute reproof. I glanced up from my meditations to discover that Gawl, young Koji, and blond, lovely, _sane and whole_ Ryo were being herded into a police car. Time to go.

=================(o)=================

Back in the lab, I sat in front of video cameras, carefully composing myself. _Kanae, _I reminded myself firmly. My mind had not called me Koji for years. I had disciplined even my own unconscious to be Kanae, for only then could I feel safe in sleep. A little safe. Marginally. Enough to sleep at all.

The camera view showed Takuma Nekasa's back as he hunched over his computer, mumbling in his madness. For some reason I could not explain, I touched a few buttons, switched the view, until I saw his face, lit by the pale, ghostly glow of the screen displaying his calculations and charts.

_Look at those eyes, Kanae_, I told myself firmly. _That is what your dear Ryo will become. That sweet blond boy you watched today, who joked with his tall green-haired friend, will one day become that _thing_ you see before you. _

His eyes were wide, white showing all around, darting from side to side, fingers flying over the keys as he searched for the germ of our destruction.

_Oh Ryo…_


End file.
